In the beginning of the story,
Offred explicitly stated that she “intended to last,” meaning that she had no
desire to die by her own hand or otherwise.
The events of the story have taken their tolls on her, and by the final
scene, she is resigned to life or death and is completely indifferent regarding
her fate as well as those around her.
The removal of love from her life and the realization about how little
she actually had in this society completely removed Offred’s desire to survive.
Offred’s love is presented clearly
in four distinct characters within the story, and each are eventually separated
from her. Offred is first separated from
her mother, signifying society’s separation from the perverse and free. This separation – as it technically took
place long before the events of the red center – establishes Offred as we see
her at the beginning of the novel. She
has distanced herself from perverse emotion – indeed, emotion of any kind – and
relinquished her freedom. She “steels
herself,” as her mother had told her to.
It is ironic and fitting that her mother was the one who told her to be
strong, as she becomes strong enough to handle the new society as a result of
her distance from her mother’s behavior.
Offred is then faced with the
separation from her daughter. She is
initially separated from Luke and her daughter simultaneously, but her second
symbolic separation is relatively more important in Offred’s development in the
latter portion of the book. (This is not
to say that the initial separation is unimportant, however. Most of Offred’s apathy and suicidal considerations
stem from this event, as well as her separation from life in general. That said, this is a somewhat ambiguous
development and it isn’t presented clearly; the second separation represents a
more definitive and identifiable change in Offred’s personality.) When shown a picture of her daughter as she
currently looks, Offred is shocked by how much she’s grown and how little she
can now connect to her maternal feelings.
Having little ability to connect with what she knows of her daughter,
Offred assumes that her daughter is unable to remember her, entirely. Now removed from her daughter, whom had been
her source of hope for most of the story, Offred loses a good amount of her
emotional conviction.
Thirdly, when Offred encounters and
separates from Moira in Jezebel’s, she loses her ability to relate with others
as well as her entire ability to trudge on through this new life. Moira had always been Offred’s rebellious and
feisty feminist counterpart; witnessing her in her current situation – a
playboy bunny in a secret brothel – destroyed Offred’s ability to fight for her
own convictions. She is appalled that
her friend, whom she thought would never back down when her rights and freedoms
were endangered, now resigns herself to be objectified wholly for men’s
enjoyment before being thrown out like trash.
Moira’s suggestion that Offred joins her shows Offred how broken Moira
has truly become, and it disintegrates her will to fight against her own self
objectification; she allows the commander to have sex with her that evening,
telling herself that she’ll “fake it.”
Finally, Offred’s emotional
separation with Luke during her series of encounters with Nick completely
removes the love that she once knew in life, allowing her to become resigned to
her possible death. This is heavily
evidenced in her tone when discussing the consequences of her actions. She dismisses them as distinct but irrelevant
possibilities, even though many of them may result in death. While Offred once became fearful that another
might break the rules, she no longer cares if she herself is killed for what she
has done. The guilt she feels on the
first night with Nick is the final death-knell for Offred. His love was the final thing protecting her
from the darkness of this world, and once it leaves she loses all will to go
on. She expresses total unconcern for
her future in the final sentence: “And so I step up, into the darkness within;
or else the light.” While any number of
possible interpretations of her meaning here may be valid, they all show the
same change in her character; any possible future she may face is equally
acceptable and the distinction is arbitrary.
Offred’s obstinate will to survive
in the beginning of the book is replaced in the end with a total apathy for her
own fate. Her love for her family was
all that kept her alive, even after they had all been completely separated, and
once she lost them, she lost herself as well.
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